Variable pay schemes

We will work with you to understand why you want a bonus or incentive scheme, so that we can design a system to meet your needs.

Bonus and incentive schemes can be a useful way of rewarding high performance​. To tailor yours, we will look at what currently works well and what issues you have, and also take account of how you see your organisation developing.

Getting bonuses right

Variable pay schemes need to be sophisticated enough to improve desired performance, yet be clear enough to be easily understood.

As well as recognising past achievements they can also provide an incentive for future performance to help keep people engaged.

​Variable pay systems can be a useful way of rewarding high performance, provided that people know what is being rewarded and what they have to do to earn them.

How we can help

We have set up bonus and incentive schemes in a variety of settings, for executives and professional staff, and for clerical and manual workers.

Schemes can be linked to individual, team or organisational performance – it depends on what behaviours and performance you are looking to encourage and reward. As long as there are ways of objectively measuring the performance to be incentivised then we can design something suitable.

We will work with you to understand why you want a variable pay scheme, so that we can design a system that measures the right things.

It is crucial to set targets that are sufficiently stretching, yet achievable. We will model options for triggering and calculating payments so that the scheme meets your needs.

It's always a good idea to engage with stakeholders in the design phase and sometimes we run a focus group to get them involved.

We'll draft outline scheme rules for you and we can help to communicate the scheme detail if required.